James Arbuthnot: I am grateful to the Chief Secretary. I am trying to take this document seriously, but I am having some difficulty, not least because of the removal
	by my right hon. Friend the Deputy Prime Minister of the excellent Liberal Democrat Minister from the Ministry of Defence, which shows something of the Government’s attitude towards defence. Does the Chief Secretary to the Treasury accept that his policy would destroy the submarine building industry of this country?

Caroline Lucas: I want to make some progress.
	Rather than pursuing that particular argument, I want to argue that it is now time to shift the emphasis of the defence debate and that the best deterrence of all is to work with other nations to solve global threats such as fossil fuel-induced climate disruption, transnational trafficking of weapons and drugs, and the poverty and desperation that fuels conflict, hunger and violence around the world.
	That is why it is deeply worrying and, indeed, the height of irresponsibility that both the 2010 strategic defence and security review and this review of an alternative to Trident have not explored the full range of options. The Prime Minister trumpeted the review as “neutral” and “factual”, but I would argue that it is biased and empty of essential facts. That means that there is a risk that any parliamentary votes taken in 2016 will be ill-informed and hung up on a cold war era that has long gone.
	The decision that should be taken is one based on what would genuinely contribute most to the security of the British people. There is a real argument that says that by not replacing Trident we could improve national security and allow the Ministry of Defence to spend the more than £100 billion saved over the lifetime of any successor nuclear weapon system on an appropriate response to the real security threats and challenges of the 21st century. The 2010 national security strategy identified these as organised crime, cyber-warfare, pandemics and, of course, climate change. Scientists, former US Presidents and, indeed, former UK Prime Ministers, among others, have all agreed that climate change is in fact the greatest threat facing humankind, and every pound spent on Trident is a pound not spent on more appropriate responses to the real dangers linked to climate change.
	If that is the case, let us explore how that money could have been better spent. The £80 billion to £100 billion price tag for Trident could have been spent on energy
	efficiency, energy conservation and renewable energy, all of which represent an investment in a positive future and the opportunity to be world leaders in an area of rapidly advancing technology, as opposed to a cold war past. Just £16 billion would insulate the 16 million homes in Britain that are currently uninsulated, saving 4% of UK carbon emissions and helping to prevent 20,000 annual cold-related deaths, and £30 billion would provide 3,500 offshore turbines, supplying 15% of UK electricity use. Crucially, positive investment in a greener future would make us more secure by reducing the impacts of climate change and ending our dependence on foreign oil—a key root cause of global terrorism.
	The national security strategy also highlights the ongoing need to tackle terrorism, but as Tony Blair himself said in October 2005:
	“I do not think that anyone pretends that the independent nuclear deterrent is a defence against terrorism”.—[Official Report, 19 October 2005; Vol. 437, c. 841.]
	A group of senior military officers, including the former head of the armed forces, Field Marshall Lord Bramall, reached much the same conclusion in a letter to The Times in 2009:
	“Nuclear weapons have shown themselves to be completely useless as a deterrent to the threats and scale of the violence we currently face or are likely to face, particularly international terrorism.”
	As one commentator has recently put it,
	“confronting the threats of today with nuclear weapons is as archaic as attempting to fight tanks with a blade attached to the barrel of a rifle would have been 70 years ago.”
	The bottom line is that the UK does not need Trident; nor can we afford it. An independent and strategic assessment of risk does not justify spending tens of billions of pounds on Trident when we have, for example, troops on the front line who are not getting the equipment they need. Alternatively, and in this time of austerity, we might also question whether or not the initial estimated £25 billion could pay instead for 60,000 newly qualified nurses or 60,000 new secondary school teachers for the next 10 years. That is why I say that to use the amount of money suggested on a project that will make Britain and the world less, not more, safe is politically irresponsible, morally bankrupt and economically obscene.
	Moreover, this Government, like the last, have committed themselves under the non-proliferation treaty to
	“make special efforts to establish the necessary framework to achieve and maintain a world without nuclear weapons.”
	The UK committed to unilateral disarmament when it signed the NPT in 1968 and agreed to negotiate the elimination of all nuclear weapons. So far, Britain has not played a particularly constructive role in that process.